Whose Learning Should be priortized? Evidence from Citizen Led Assessment

Since 2000, major advances have been made in the education sector in both the developed and the underdeveloped countries. While growth is noticeable, it has not kept pace with the MDG and EFA targets; constrained by trends in... [ view full abstract ]

Since 2000, major advances have been made in the education sector in both the developed and the underdeveloped countries. While growth is noticeable, it has not kept pace with the MDG and EFA targets; constrained by trends in demography, urbanization, conflict, migration, health, and economic and shifting global realities. GMR 2012 reveals that at least 250 million primary school aged children around the world are still not able to meet the minimum learning standards. Large scale citizen and learning assessments including The Annual Status of Education Reports from Pakistan and India (2012, 2013 and 2014) paint a dismal picture of consistently low levels of achievement. This is coupled with widespread social and gender disparities in educational outcomes that undermine substantive equity at structural and functional levels. At a time when the global community is deeply engaged in planning post-2015 development goals, it is vital to ensure that the vision of EFA is not just limited to UPE and access but more importantly to learning with equity.
The aim of this paper is therefore to highlight the emerging disparities in learning and teaching with respect to language barriers, public private provision, ECE, gender and wealth) highlighted powerfully in the ASER reports of India and Pakistan. Gender disaggregated data sets for 2012, 2013 and 2014 will be used for trend analyses. The main purpose of this paper is to influence the post 2015 agenda and discuss how the learning goals can be integrated for the post 2015 development agenda.